german indian design

Universal Design Research  – Overview

The DAAD scholarship awarded to me through the University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Hannover) proved to be a thoroughly insightful and enriching experience. It provided me with the invaluable opportunity to consciously identify and appreciate cultural differences with an ability to withhold judgement while doing so.

A ‘universal’ approach

In today’s world that is increasingly becoming global, it is essential for any culture to be able to understand and respect the diversity of backgrounds we possess and this scholarship is a step towards a more informed, more tolerant and above all, more harmonious community. Without this sense of understanding, it is meaningless to talk of a “universal” approach that merely focuses on physical aspects of design. These layers of culture, behaviour and emotions have to be added in order to make the design more meaningful to all and thereby more universal, knowing that problems due to age, health and income are present in different forms across different countries.

My experience

From nuances in packaging to behavioral tendencies and linguistic complexities, the project spanned a series of impressions attained as a first time visitor to Europe. My focus area being ‘The concept of personal space within public spaces’, I derived the possibility of speaking to a multitude of people, understanding their mind-sets and perceiving how the concept of space varies across cultures, in the process affecting one’s behaviour and body language. The inherent factors of climate, tradition and purpose add to the complexity of this subject and by living in Germany, I could fathom the meaning of these factors while drawing from my background as an Indian resident with a background of design.

Overall, I am grateful to the DAAD (German Academic Exchange), the Hochschule Hannover – Prof. Birgit Weller, Marie Kuprat and the National Institute of Design - Ravi Shankar, India for enabling me to embark upon this fascinating journey that bridges the gap between two very different, yet very similar cultures of Germany and India.

Few years ago my first trip outside India, I arrived at the Frankfurt airport from Bangalore, stood still for a few minutes watching, in anxiety and Wow! My heart racing to adust to the high heeled pace and efficient setting. It was like a foreign film I thought and then felt ok about it, having seen many of them since a kid. A world very different from where I come, I say that that even while we all are in the 21 century! I came back with the memory of walking in and out the virtual screen and I visited Berlin again after 2 years.

I stayed at Prof. Birgit Weller’s home this visit for a couple of days. She is a very warm, affectionate and straightforward person, full of optimistic enthusiasm, love for life Birgit is. It was wonderful working with her on the proposed joint Universal design curriculum, FHH – HTW and National Institute of Design where I teach.

I visited HTW design faculty and Prof. Katrin Hinz took me around the facilities of prototying workshops, animation & photography labs, and the highlight was the Game design faculty who are doing amazing things with new technology aids. Prof. Katrin made possible to arrange for a meeting with Dr with whom we shared the proposal of the joint Universal Design curriculum for his views and support to take further. He was extremely positive and enthusiastic about the collaboration. I made a short presentation to the communication design students on UD & India, a glimpse! and also sat through their work on packaging, where I found similarities in approach to ideation with NID.

This second visit was not like walking out of a movie set, I actually lived the experience, felt the depth of emotions, values, joys of being, in talking, conversing with Katrin, Birgit, and friends. I made a short trip to Hamburg, a lovely city, slower pace than Berlin I felt, rich city I was told before the wall, I found maybe it was a little like Bangalore I knew 20 years ago!!

Tim Oelker, a designer who has a fine office in the most desirable place in the world took me around a boat trip explaining the traverses of Hamburg along the water channel. We visited Stilwork, a collective of contemporary design stores. It was a coffee table book experience, live and physically I am there! The best part is Tim made it look so daily life.

While on the ferry we talked about each others’ professional design practice experiences and they were similar in terms of the clients mindset, etc! Tim’s colleague asked me how I felt about my first trip to Germany, I said like walking into a movie set, she looked disturbed, didn’t seem to accept it, then I explained to her that it was only a feeing of mine considering the place I come from which is in state of chaos in comparison. Incidentally she had not heard of Bangalore!! This set me thinking. My young cousin of her age in Machilipatnam, south eastern coastal town in India wouldn’t have heard of say… Stuttgart or!!

I don’t hear music or any of the kind of sounds in routine day/night activity in Germany, I mean while one takes a walk along the streets, even in the evenings. Not talking about weekends, guess lot happens, sound and merry!!

When I a mean day to day to work , I think you should play music in the trams and trains of Germany. This will relax the atmosphere for all, more for the visiting people from other countries. Maybe even a TV, this will make people converse, even on silly topics outside of their homes with others. Which all people do across cultures, etc. Which is good and sustainable way I think and are glimpses of existentialist societies actually. I am doing my job, you are doing yours, the TV episode is the snack and life is the daily meal to chew and ruminate. This continuance and acceptance of life comes without stress, comes when the older lady in the tram chats up with you when you have one year old in the arms or pram and have stepped into the tram. It also happens when I ‘am able to or allowed to’ affectionately and naturally smile or make comic faces at the little one which we usually do in India.

You have worked very hard to be where you are, highly respected and adored for your caliber, dedication to work, resilience and proficiency world over. You are extremely warm at heart people, very friendly and helpful when you get talking.

So let’s begin with music and some noise around,… its okay! Am sure you are ok too but neither of you all want to take the lead doing it. You maybe feel it is the Govt’s job or the Bahn’s job. No , it can happen through a private enterprise or the tram driver’s love for radio and he likes to play it loud. Maybe the Tram driver is the guy. In India we have Rajni Kant who had a humble and mundane beginning as a public service employee is today a super star in the movies, fills millions of hearts with his dramatic presence on screen and music.

Two weeks of
friendly accommodation
great impressions
and creative cultural exchange
come to an end

Yet this experience is too fresh, too overwhelming and too blissful to say more than this:
Thank you! Thanks to Birgit and Marie, the people at NID, my companions and everybody who made this trip possible and unforgetable.
India – we’ll miss you.

German Indian Friendships

It is some time ago, that we went to India, to take part at the universal design workshop in 2009 at NID, Ahmedabad.
This was a great experience - Furthermore we had the chance to meet some wonderful people.
Luckily we had the chance to come back to India again, to study at NID for half a year.
Most of our former friends were still there and helped us to get access to the unkown way of life and structures in India. Without them it would have not been so easy for us to live in the Orient.
Some of these people also got the opportunity to come to study in Germany in 2010, some not.
But one followed our invitation and made the long way to Germany and stayed with us from December 2009 to January 2011.
It was a great experience for us to meet him again - somebody who never stood in the snow in his life before and we hope, it was also a great experience for him, too
During the stay, we to showed him around in in northern Germany and let him be a part of our lives here.
We choosed some of the pictures we made over these 3 weeks, just to show how important this friendship is for us. We enjoyed the time with our indian visitor and of course we hope to see him again soon.

Impressiv to see: the biggest milkproducer in the world!

Indian-German Workshop at NID Campus:

13 indian students and 9 german students worked in the last view days on the topic packaging for milk products in an intercultutral context. The differences between indian and german food culture was discussed in a very emotional and expressiv way.

To show the differences the indian students brought the german visitors to typical markest, shops and dayries. They explored while discussing the meaning of ghee, butter and cheese the different needs and types of use.

We have left our Campus and Friends in Bangalore for a couple of days to meet Birgit, Marie and some students from Hannover in Ahmedabad. Now we have reached NID’s main campus/oasis. It is great to see this beautiful building and garden once again.
We feel that a lot has changed in Ahemadabad during the last 4 years. The Airport transformed from old barracks into a nice building. The streets are even more lively and new shops have been opened. But nevertheless it seems that the people managed to keep their warm and friendly mentality. India is moving forward.
At the moment it is open electives time in the NID. Any student can visit any NID campus for different workshops in all kind of areas. In Bangalore we took part in a great Bamboo Workshop for a few days. We are looking forward to see all the great results: different structures like a Busstop in Full Scale. The whole campus here in Ahmedabad is full of people working on thousands of ideas and projects. It is exciting.

Once again we would like to introduce ourselves to the “german indian design blog”. Our names are Tim Zurmöhle and Ramon-Maurice Kopp. Both of us were visiting Ahmedabad almost 4 years ago for a workshop on “air refreshening”. We gathered a lot of experiences and met a lot of people that later became our friends.
Now after graduation and 1,5 years of working experience in Germany, we again have the chance to work and experience India via the DAAD scholarship. We are working on the subject of Universal Design and we are very happy that we got the chance to once again see this amazing place and people, to learn more about design and to share our experiences.

Since we are already here in Bangalore for about 2 weeks, we could see and work with Ravi Shankar and a lot of students. We would like to thank everybody on the NID Campus for the warm welcome and the enriching talks.